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WELCOME TO THE FOURTH TURNING

“An impasse over the federal budget reaches a stalemate. The president and Congress both refuse to back down, triggering a near-total government shutdown. The president declares emergency powers. Congress rescinds his authority. Dollar and bond prices plummet. The president threatens to stop Social Security checks. Congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling. Default looms. Wall Street panics.”

“In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party. The catalyst will unfold according to a basic Crisis dynamic that underlies all of these scenarios: An initial spark will trigger a chain reaction of unyielding responses and further emergencies. The core elements of these scenarios (debt, civic decay, global disorder) will matter more than the details, which the catalyst will juxtapose and connect in some unknowable way. If foreign societies are also entering a Fourth Turning, this could accelerate the chain reaction. At home and abroad, these events will reflect the tearing of the civic fabric at points of extreme vulnerability – problem areas where America will have neglected, denied, or delayed needed action.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe

“Imagine some national (and probably global) volcanic eruption, initially flowing along channels of distress that were created during the Unraveling era and further widened by the catalyst. Trying to foresee where the eruption will go once it bursts free of the channels is like trying to predict the exact fault line of an earthquake. All you know in advance is something about the molten ingredients of the climax, which could include the following:

This Fourth Turning could mark the end of man. It could be an omnicidal Armageddon, destroying everything, leaving nothing. If mankind ever extinguishes itself, this will probably happen when its dominant civilization triggers a Fourth Turning that ends horribly. For this Fourth Turning to put an end to all this would require an extremely unlikely blend of social disaster, human malevolence, technological perfection and bad luck.

The Fourth Turning could mark the end of modernity. The Western saecular rythm – which began in the mid-fifteenth century with the Renaissance – could come to an abrupt terminus. The seventh modern saeculum would be the last. This too could come from total war, terrible but not final. There could be a complete collapse of science, culture, politics, and society. Such a dire result would probably happen only when a dominant nation (like today’s America) lets a Fourth Turning ekpyrosis engulf the planet. But this outcome is well within the reach of foreseeable technology and malevolence.

The Fourth Turning could spare modernity but mark the end of our nation. It could close the book on the political constitution, popular culture, and moral standing that the word America has come to signify. The nation has endured for three saecula; Rome lasted twelve, the Soviet Union only one. Fourth Turnings are critical thresholds for national survival. Each of the last three American Crises produced moments of extreme danger: In the Revolution, the very birth of the republic hung by a thread in more than one battle. In the Civil War, the union barely survived a four-year slaughter that in its own time was regarded as the most lethal war in history. In World War II, the nation destroyed an enemy of democracy that for a time was winning; had the enemy won, America might have itself been destroyed. In all likelihood, the next Crisis will present the nation with a threat and a consequence on a similar scale.

Or the Fourth Turning could simply mark the end of the Millennial Saeculum. Mankind, modernity, and America would all persevere. Afterward, there would be a new mood, a new High, and a new saeculum. America would be reborn. But, reborn, it would not be the same.

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Administrator says:

The Party’s Just Beginning

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/21/2012 08:21 -0500

Via Mark Grant, author of Out of the Box,

“For thousands more years the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across–which happened to be the Earth — where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidently swallowed by a small dog.”

-Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Still here. We are still here. It is true that we have many hours to go before today crosses across all of the time zones and becomes tomorrow and, in any event, the Chateau Petrus will not have been in vain. I am holding classes in deduction now in Nassau on my boat. Other boat owners have dropped by and are all inquiring about the fiscal cliff. “The plunge is at hand,” I tell them as Congress adjourns, the rank and file Republicans turn on the House Speaker and the Lords of Chaos are in charge once again. All of the stuff and nonsense about taxing the wealthy and gibberish about who and when and where to tax is like so much marshmallow spread on a peanut butter sandwich; it just doesn’t matter. The galling omission of not concentrating on what is truly important, the cost of entitlements and social programs and what the nation can and cannot afford shows the true worth of our nation’s leaders which is about equal to a wooden nickel or a three dollar bill. It is the Lost Boys living in Never-Never Land and Wendy nowhere in sight.

“In the first place God made idiots. He did this for practice. Then he made politicians. This was a mistake. Then he tried to correct His mistake by having the people elect the politicians of their own choosing. He then realized that he had made idiots twice and he pondered his miscalculation for seven days. Next he made dogs and finally being satisfied that he had done something correctly he went off on holiday. One day he may come back and finish the exercise.”

-The Wizard

So here we are on December 21 and we have no plan to deal with the financial condition of the country. The Democrats are perfectly happy that no one has to work because those people will re-elect them. Then the people that do work should hand out money to everyone else because my money should now be everyone’s money and everyone needs to share in the sandbox and Karl Marx has left the London library and is now residing in Washington D.C. The fall back position of the Democrats is that if this is not enough money then the Fed can print zillions of pieces of paper saying, “In God We Trust” which may be the only thing to trust in because no one will trust the little pieces of paper after some time. One day someone will wake up and announce that these green bills are not money and that they are just paper and the Munchkins will say, “Oh My God” and head down the yellow brick road to find the Wizard and he will be on my boat in the Bahamas and the Wicked Witch of the West will hand out the bad news. All quite simple. Very similar to Dorothy falling from the sky. The wind begins to twitch, the house falls and Oz realizes that they have encountered a “horse of a different color.”

Now what has happened this morning is that someone has woken up the Lullaby League. These market participants have been sleeping and whiling away their hours thinking everything was fine and that Good Witch Glinda was going to wave her magic wand and make everything all hunky and dory. They have been dreaming that the Sorcerer Bernanke could change green paper into money and at will and forever just like Sorcerer Draghi who lives but a continent away. Alchemy has returned to the world and the stuff of magic has discovered the Middle Earth where the elves and the goblins play. This morning no one is happy that they have been awakened. The dwarves are about and Grumpy is leading the protest.

So the Munchkins have been awakened and I predict the Wicked With is right. The people of Oz have left the poppy fields where they slept in a flower induced dream and will soon be headed into the Emerald City to demand answers. The melting has begun.